YMMV / The Legend of Dark Witch 3

• Anticlimax Boss: Neither character's final boss battles are as satisfying as the previous two games' ending fights.
  • Zizou faces Day and Simeone. Day isn't much more challenging than she was at the beginning of the game, only swapping out her Hopeless Boss Fight-inducing Capacity Zero with the shot-blocking, water-based Ultima Splash. Simeone isn't significantly more difficult than the other Beast Men fights, only really becoming dangerous once she casts magic that rains down beams once you draw close to it. Her Revenge Magic is the only attack in the game to deal multiple points of damage, but is very well telegraphed and not particularly quick either.
  • Day fights Zizou and Mati. Zizou is slightly harder than Day, using Upper Tornado and a Revenge Magic that tracks the player's position. But Mati (outside of Lunatic difficulty) is even easier than Simeone, the main danger being that she moves erratically and actively tries to take advantage of Collision Damage. Her Revenge Magic is a weakened version of Capacity Zero, which doesn't do much more than drag out the fight.
• Broken Base: Some fans are happy to see boss skills and player-usable Revenge Magic gone (given that they managed to be useless in the stages yet simultaneously overpowered against bosses), while others believe that they should have tried to fix the balancing instead of removing them outright.
  • There's some debate of the stage design; some feel this game's is more interesting while others feel the earlier games' flows better and is better to quickly run.
  • Being a 3DS game in 2017, some felt that the game should have released on the Nintendo Switch instead, especially since there are already Dark Witch games on the Switch.
• Contested Sequel:
  • While the level design is generally agreed to be a massive step up from the previous games, there are a number of fans who believe that the game has removed too many mechanics and ultimately lost what makes the Dark Witch series unique. Opinions range from Dark Witch 3 being the absolute best game in the series, with more nuanced stage and boss design and smart adjustments to the first Dark Witch's difficulty without simplifying everything as in Dark Witch 2, to Dark Witch 3 being the worst mainline game by far, due to losing its identity and feeling as if it were kicked out of the door to be done with the fast-fading Nintendo 3DS.
  • In a popularity poll held by Inside System in February 2018, Dark Witch 3 was not only the lowest-voted mainline game, but actually ranked below Brave Dungeon, suggesting that not a lot of fans (on the Japanese side, at the very least) were pleased with the game. However, the 2019 poll has Dark Witch 3 in third place behind Dark Witch 2 and Brave Dungeon, with the original Dark Witch being the lowest-rated mainline game. Vindicated by History, perhaps?
• Fridge Brilliance: Regarding one of the aforementioned Anticlimax Bosses: the game makes it clear that Day is picking fights with people way above her weight class, only defeating Zizou thanks to a surprise Capacity Zero. Take that trick away from her and she folds with very little resistance. Also explains why she can then beat Zizou and Mati back-to-back in her story; they're not trying to win, just convince Day to stop, and give Day's friends time to arrive.
• Fridge Logic: The strange distinction between Beastmen (non-human, non-magical creatures) and Fae (magical creatures) is headache-inducing for anyone trying to keep up with the series lore, finally reaching critical mass with the baffling rebranding of Fae as Beast Men in this game. It makes slightly more sense in the Japanese version, where the terms are juujin (roughly "human-animal hybrids") and mamono (roughly "monster/demon"). But one thing that does not make sense in any language is how Patty is a mamono and Papelne is a juujin despite both being fairly similar-looking Cat Girls. One long shot theory, based on the fact that Pelusa's profile on the Japanese Dark Witch 2 website lists Golems as mamono but herself as a juujin, is that Papelne could actually have some level of human heritage.
• Funny Moments: Claudia's attempts at being seductive fall absolutely flat with Zizou, who, among other things, makes fun of her for thinking she's older than Zizou, then trolling Claudia by remaining silent when she tries to understand what kind of creature Zizou can possibly be.
• Heartwarming Moments: The end of Day's story. Day has just tired herself out fighting Zizou and Mati, and is despondent; Zizou already caused Simeone to retreat, so Day can't get the answers she's looking for, and she's finally understood what a monster she's been and how it was all for nothing. And then, Al confronts her about being alone. Then Seama, and Rio, and Neville, and Cholesy, and Miah, and Teddy, and finally Wonder Girl, who gets Day's stony demeanor to finally break by boasting about how she'll reform Day's evil ways and that villains who become heroes again are the most just of all. She smiles, calls Wonder Girl shorty, a common term of endearment for her, and realizes she has all her friends again. The story ends with a shot of the Magic Lion Corps. back together again, with all of them carrying an item another of them own, such as Day holding Al's lantern, Seama wearing Cholsey's head creature, Wonder Girl riding Seama's robo hands, etc. It's even implied either Zizou or Mati was the one who got the other members of the Lion's Corp to come and reconcile with Day.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Inside System repeatedly insisted that the game would be released in 2017, starting in late 2016 and continuing all the way into December 2017. The game released in Japan on December 27th, the last Wednesday of the year. The western release was roughly a week earlier in a (hopefully) benign case of Christmas Rushed.
  • Might be harsher considering the issues with this as a few people blame Inside system trying to match the date for so many things being stripped down.
• Scrappy Mechanic: In Lunatic mode, enemies send bullets at the player when they are defeated. Not only is this by itself a bad idea in a game that never has any shortage of on-screen monsters, but it turns out that "enemies" include things like the mid-boss towers, the individual pieces of the Reverse Shrapnel enemies in Cholesy's stage, and the destructible blocks in Zanetti's stage. It gets worse in Day's run. At least with Zizou, you can more easily react to the shots coming at you. With Day? Her short range shots really hurt her, because she has to be close to enemies to kill them. Thankfully, enemies killed with the dash or when being stood next to with the Liner Shot don't actually cause a shot to form. That being said, this stops becoming a godsend when you realize how much damage some enemies soak up, and how generally speaking, putting yourself in front of an enemy puts you at great risk of getting hit by the enemy. It's a Catch 22; damned if you stay a moderate distance and get shot with the death pellet, damned if you get close and get bashed by a foe.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Stages are far denser than the previous two Dark Witch games, while bosses don't have weaknesses and are far more complex. On top of that, upgrade costs are much higher.
• That One Boss:
  • Wonder Girl is a pain on higher difficulties, mostly due to the doppelgangers from her Wonder Water attack becoming a lot beefier and lingering around for a long time. Her sword attack also has deceptively long range...and also happens to be the move that her doppelgangers duplicate.
  • If Wonder Girl is a pain, Patty is a nightmare. She's got roughly the same gimmick; easy to dodge attacks made more difficult by releasing water/miniature (Water for Wonder Girl, Miniature for Patty) clones of herself to make things more unpredictable. Her cloud attack is very simple, and you practically have to dodge Patty's lunge during the process of dodging the cloud's shots, meaning you kill two birds with one stone. Patty's swipes are incredibly telegraphed and just travel forward. Her lunge always covers the same distance, and if you're feeling brave, you can actually walk under it. Even her miniatures aren't so bad if you've been leveling up your Liner Shot at all. So what's the problem? Partway into the fight, Patty will, as expected, use her Revenge Magic. Except her Revenge Magic is drastically different from any other in the game. Hers is a Status Buff called Lightning Angry. Once she uses this spell, everything goes to hell. First of all, she becomes somewhat faster, and all her attacks are in some way 'doubled.' Now, when she swipes, she'll swipe twice, one swipe going directly diagonally above the other, catching you if you get in close. She also varies between swiping once, twice, or thrice, making dodging this attack more dangerous. Her cloud attack now creates two clouds that swamp you in laser blasts to dodge, and now her lunge partway through the attack is much faster, and makes it so the only way to dodge the attack without injury is to either bait Patty to send out one cloud to the right and one to the left so you have more time to dodge their lasers, or to walk under her when she lunges, and the timing for that is incredibly tight. But the kicker is her doppelganger attack. What was a mere annoyance to get rid of before becomes a nigh-impossible to completely dodge swamp of miniature Pattys, some of which will actually jump, making dodging via Wing flat-out impossible. You need to destroy the copies, too, because even with them active, Patty will still use her other attacks. Sometimes, she'll even combo into her claw attack, which is a nightmare to dodge with all the Pattys running around. And if she uses her cloud attack while the mini Pattys are still kicking, there is almost no way to dodge the cloud lasers, the Pattys, and the real Patty lunging for you. The battle can be made somewhat easier with the High Beam or the Bomb for when the Pattys come out, but you only get three of each. You can also grind to level up the Liner Shot, which at a high enough level will make the Doppleganger threat minimal, but that still means you have to worry about her cloud attack.
  • Zanetti isn't as bad as Wonder Girl or Patty, but she will still put up a fight. The biggest issues with her are her thrust and her lasers. With her thrusts, she doesn't really telegraph when or if she's about to leap into the air, which can make dodging her thrust a crapshoot. The laser attack, though, is befuddling to dodge, especially because it also involves Zanetti's thrust attack and the chance she'll leap at you.
• That One Level: Hivi Clock Tower is one of the hardest levels in the game. The level is long, has a lot of enemies (and you'll be seeing the bat enemies a lot.) The worst part of the level involves Zizou having to navigate a narrow hallway full of ghosts, clock hands, cuckoo clocks and more of those godforsaken bat enemies. If you die at any point during this, you have to start over from the last checkpoint. At least Seama herself isn't too hard...
  • Mary Subway, Zanetti's stage, for reasons stated under Scrappy Mechanic. To better explain, while a lot of later levels are enemy gauntlets filled to the brim with possible things that will fire on you upon death, the entirety of Zanetti's stage, following the first section all levels share, is an abandoned, broken down subway. This means that the stage is filled with tight corridors with little room to dodge in. While you can destroy the bullets enemies send at you upon death in Lunatic mode, a lot will come flying at you at once. Two really annoying chokepoints, as a a result, are during the midboss tower and in one section where you go through a tunnel underneath one of the trains. For the midboss tower, destructible crates are constantly falling into the area in the middle of the arena. This would be fine if it was advisable to fight directly in front of the tower, but this is one of the towers that shoots bombs, which is a nightmare to deal with up close and personal. This means the safest way is to fight behind the constantly falling crates. Now that they explode into pellets upon destruction, though, nowhere is perfectly safe. The other roadblock is the tunnel beneath one of the train cars. For most of the level, you can choose to go an upper route on top of the trains, or take a route through the trains. You can't do that here due to a rockslide and train cars crashing. You need to go under the train car...which is filled with burrowing enemies in a tunnel you cannot jump in. In easy through hard, this is a small challenge, where you have to destroy debris blocking the way out while managing the enemies that burrow up to pummel you. In Lunatic, it's an endurance challenge where you can't easily keep track of all the enemies due to the bullets you have to break with either the Liner Shot or Lord Attack. You will almost certainly get hit unless you brought and have some High Beams on you. Oh, and the debris blocking the exit out you have to break? The breakable objects that will also fire pellets at you when destroyed in Lunatic.
  • Stream Mersey. Fitting that one of those bosses, in this case, Wonder Girl, would be the boss of an annoying stage. Especially early on where you won't have that many hearts and are thinking that just upgrading your shots will get you through every challenge, this stage exists to kick you in back and throw in gauntlets that can and will overwhelm you, even with the highest possible Liner Shot you can have at the point in the game. The main chokepoints are most of the downward descents in the river where enemies will swarm you from behind, and in the area full of clouds later on. For the area filled with clouds, it doesn't matter how powerful you are; clouds don't die, and many of the platforms down to the bottom of this cliff are clouds that will wake up and electrocute you before throwing a pellet at you. The issue here is you can't take your time or hurry through. If you take your time, you'll be hit by enemy attacks while waiting out the clouds. If you rush, you'll run into enemies as you drop like a rock down the cliff, because the area is crawling with foes.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Continuing Klinsy's role from the very first game, Al is generally the first boss players will truly fight and is there to let players know that the gloves are off. While nowhere near as hard to fight as Rio or especially Wonder Girl, her moveset from the first game has drastically changed and improved. Probably the hardest aspect of the fight is when she starts using a pseudo-blizzard attack that kicks up a gale and directs nearly a dozen ice crystals at you. You have to lead the shots a bit by hopping up and down, or deflecting the attack by shooting the ice crystals. The problem is, if you're trigger happy with Liner Shot, you might not have the capacity to beat back all the crystals. And further, the game doesn't immediately make it clear the ice crystals are specifically being aimed at you. The way the wind attack is used hints at the solution, but once again, it's not immediately obvious that Al can angle the wind to aim the ice crystals. Which she can. This means you have to go against common sense, get close to the woman firing ice crystals at you, and then leap back while using Wing to make her waste shots. That's not all, though. This fight also teaches you how important positioning is because of her revenge magic; since Al will chase you when she decides to get physical with her scythe, you have a modicum of control of where she'll end up. If you don't steer her well by the time her revenge magic kicks up, she could be in the center of the screen. This becomes a problem because her revenge magic is a very fast guessing-game where you have to determine if you need to jump and then stay still or stay still and jump, because her Freeze Barrier, when it explodes, unleashes two layers of ice 'shrapnel' at you. The two layers aim differently in relation to you, with one always aiming diagonally above you and the other directly at you. Which does which swaps every time she uses Freeze Barrier, but the first time is completely random. This is why it's important to kite her to one of the sides; otherwise, you won't have time to react the first time she uses Freeze Barrier. Finally, she has another attack that changes how it's used when Al uses it, but it's simple enough to Wing over. The main issue is that you need to keep track of which direction the icicles emerged last; if they went towards Al last time, the next time, they'll go away from her, and vice versa, meaning you'll need to keep away from the wall sometimes, too. Once you learn how to fight her, she becomes much easier to deal with, but she essentially teaches you the basics of dealing with the latter bosses (Positioning, keeping track of how they last used a specific attack, how certain attacks will change with your proximity to the boss) by beating the crap out of you the first few times you fight her.